- Richar Antonio Demetrio is the first Indigenous Asháninka scientist to publish in a high-impact journal, combining traditional ecological knowledge with scientific methodology to study meliponiculture, the farming of stingless bees.
- His first paper, published in March 2025, reveals that Asháninka communities can identify more than 14 plant species used by stingless bees to build their nests, and apply sustainable practices in honey production.
- His second warns that more than 50% of the habitat of stingless bees in the Avireri-Vraem Biosphere Reserve overlaps with areas at high risk of deforestation.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Demetrio talks about the challenges he faced from both the scientific and Indigenous communities during his studies, and about the importance of balancing Western scientific methods with age-old traditional knowledge.
In Indigenous Asháninka belief, bees were once spirits in human form. Stories tell of a woman who enjoyed making masato, a traditional Amazonian fermented beverage. Every day, she would boil and mash the yuca, patiently fermenting it and offering the drink to whoever stopped by. Whole families would go and sit to drink it. The woman made more and the masato never ran out.
Word spread throughout the forest until it reached Avireri, the god of creation, who went to the community to see the woman with his own eyes. He tried the masato and waited for it to run out, but it never did. Intrigued, the god looked at her and asked, “Why does your masato never run out? I’d better turn you into a bee.” Thus, the legend goes, stingless bees were born, destined from that moment on to make the sweetest honey in the Peruvian Amazon.
This story, which has been passed down from generation to generation among the more than 50,000 Asháninka who currently live in Peru, is now enshrined in a scientific paper. Published in the journal Ethnobiology and Conservation in March 2025, the study documents, for the first time, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) about stingless bees in two communities of the central Peruvian rainforest, Marontoari and Pichiquia.
The study reveals that Asháninka communities can identify more than 14 plant species used by stingless bees to build their nests, which, according to the authors, demonstrates “a sophisticated understanding of local biodiversity.” The authors also show how they traditionally apply sustainable practices in honey production — known as meliponiculture when it involves stingless bees — such as collecting honey without cutting down trees, and using ash to control pests.
“[T]his study underscores the importance of incorporating indigenous knowledge into sustainable resource management strategies in the Amazon,” they conclude.
Demetrio is the lead author of this research, making him the first Asháninka scientist to publish a paper in a high-impact journal. Since then, he’s had another paper published, in the Journal of Ecology and Environment in July. It revealed that more than 50% of the habitat of stingless bees in the Avireri-Vraem Biosphere Reserve overlaps with areas at high risk of deforestation.
“These pressures fragment habitats, reducing nesting trees and floral resources, while disrupting colony stability, foraging, and reproduction,” it warns.
Born in Caperucía, Junín province, in the Peruvian Amazon, Demetrio is the first member of his Asháninka community to join a scientific academy. “We got in touch with the Ministry of Culture, we sent a copy of the [first] paper in English and in Asháninka, and they confirmed there’s nothing else like it,” says colleague and co-author Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, a researcher with the NGO Amazon Research Internacional. “This means Richar is the first example of an Asháninka scientist in Peru.”
The path to achieving this recognition wasn’t easy. Demetrio encountered all kinds of obstacles, from being forced to leave his community in search of better formal educational opportunities, to peers who, even after the study was published, questioned his training.
“Unfortunately, only the other day I came across researchers who had the idea that you need to have done a Ph.D. to publish a scientific paper,” says co-author César Delgado, from the government-funded Peruvian Amazon Research Institute (IIAP), who has known Demetrio since before he became involved in academia.
“I met him almost 10 years ago in the city of Iquitos, and he seemed like a nice person who was eager to learn,” Delgado adds. “He not only wanted to continue working in Indigenous communities but also to adapt to the scientific method. He quickly began to combine his local wisdom with scientific methodology.”
Demetrio took a break from his work as a park ranger in the Asháninka Communal Reserve to talk to Mongabay Latam about the challenges he faced while conducting scientific research, and the importance of integrating traditional knowledge with Western science.
Mongabay: Do you remember when you first dreamed of becoming a scientist?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: It was when I was 12 years old. I’ve always loved nature because my mother and father are Asháninka, they speak Asháninka, and, essentially, I’m from the countryside. My father spends all his time hunting, foraging and fishing. My mother’s an artisan. So they have a deep connection with nature.
When I finished high school, I began to read literature, as we didn’t have phones or computers back then, only books. I liked the work of Mario Vargas Llosa, of authors from different countries, like Chile, Argentina and even Spain.
For me, reading was fundamental: it helped me hold something in my head, gather information, and learn about society. That’s when I began to see how, as an individual, I impact nature, and I wondered whether I, as an Indigenous person, could do the same: Write. That was the goal: to be able to enter that space.
But when I studied at university, I was only taught about didactics. That’s the thing with education in Peru; it focuses solely on teaching, and not on researching flora and fauna, for example. And that’s why, when I graduated, I still hadn’t achieved what I set out to do, which was to do research as I’ve done now. Now that I’ve taken the first step, I hope to keep going and do more studies.
Mongabay: Thanks to this work, you’re now recognized as the first Asháninka scientist with a publication in a high-impact journal. How difficult was it to achieve this recognition?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: It was a long process. I went to elementary school in my community, in Caperucía, Junín, and as there was no high school there, I moved to Puerto Copa to continue my studies. Then I applied to university in Satipo to study education. After my first year, I was elected community leader for two years, 2009 and 2010 [in a meeting with the community’s 500 families].
I was the youngest leader in the community’s history. I didn’t know anything about politics, but because I was at university, I had to accept the decision. I achieved many things for the community. For example, we went to Huancayo to ask the Junín regional government to create a high school in Caperucía, and we were successful. After doing the job for two years, the community wanted to reelect me, but I said no. I said I was going to work on my personal development.
An opportunity arose with the National Service of Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP), and in 2015, I began working in the Asháninka Communal Reserve. There was no research project that year, only monitoring of the area. You could say that my first step in research was participating in the courses offered by SERNANP.
The first course I took was about orchids, but it wasn’t really a research project, because it wasn’t like finding a new species of orchid. That would have been incredible. After that, I took another course in 2016, in Iquitos, where I met Dr. César Delgado, who introduced me to his work with stingless bees. That’s when I thought, “We have these resources in my community, why don’t we take advantage of them? Rather than losing our ancestral knowledge, why don’t we look at this in more detail?”
And that’s what I’ve been doing since 2018, looking at how to start this research on bees. Because bees are our biggest pollinators of plants and flowers: 70% of the food we produce is thanks to pollination.
Mongabay: In your fieldwork and when writing up the study, how was your relationship with your scientific colleagues?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: There are three of us in the team. I represent the Asháninka Communal Reserve (EcoAsháninka), Dr. César Delgado represents the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute (IIAP), and Dr. Rosa Vásquez represents Amazon Research Internacional (ARI). There are only three of us, but we make a great team.
For the interviews in the communities, for example, we used the Western “snowball” technique, which is a kind of non-probability sampling that Rosa and César suggested. I spoke in Asháninka with a person who knew about bees, that person introduced me to another, and we went on like that, interviewing people who had knowledge about bees.
Then, when we were writing it, Dr. César helped us with the written analysis and inclusion of Western knowledge. Dr. Rosa Vázquez also helped us with English and how modern science relates to traditional knowledge.
Mongabay: What challenges did you face when writing the paper?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: The biggest challenge for me was data collection, because the interviewees weren’t always open to providing us with information. We had to seek them out and explain what we were doing. Sometimes, in the communities, the mothers, fathers and grandparents who have this knowledge are wary about handing it over. It’s easy to say, “I’ll go into the field, gather the information, and leave.” But it’s not like that. You have to spend time with them, you have go into the field and chat, you have to be there.
For example, to begin with, they would ask me, “Why do you want this information? What if it’s a trick and you plan to sell it? You’re going to make money from it.” There was a lack of trust. That’s why you have to coordinate it well so that they understand what it is we want as Asháninka kin.
In this case, we worked with two communities, Pichiquia and Marontoari. I’d already worked in the latter previously, setting up beehives, so the community trusted me more. I began to compile traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) there, first meeting with the community leader and telling him about the work we wanted to do, explaining that if we were successful, we’d have an opportunity to show the world what the Asháninka are capable of.
After that, we had a meeting with the other community, Pichiquia. First, we consulted with the community leader, who said, “This is good, this is what we want: more Asháninka researchers. We don’t want someone from the Andes or the coast, or a foreigner, to come here and take our work, get information from us, and not give us any credit.”
Mongabay: One of the main findings of the study is that the communities breed four different species of stingless bees to make honey, and that they also have different uses for them. Can you tell us more about this?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: We found that the communities were very knowledgeable about four species of stingless bees. One is the one we know as neronto or pitsi, whose scientific name is Melipona eburnea. There’s another that’s black and makes more honey, which we locally call earato, Melipona grandis. There’s also a smaller one that we know as shinkenka, which is Tetragonisca angustula, and the last one is known as eri, which is Trigona amazonensis.
Another thing we found is that the Asháninka don’t eat the honey for nutritional purposes. Only when they’re sick, only then do they consume the honey or pollen. Just because someone is Asháninka doesn’t mean they eat honey all day long; no, not at all. For example, the pollen is used to stop bleeding. We also use honey for coughs, flu and headaches. It’s mixed with another root or tree bark extract, such as dragon’s blood, cat’s claw or sanango. We mix it with a little sugarcane liquor and drink it like that.
Mongabay: How did the study conclude that Western culture could benefit from this Indigenous people’s ancestral knowledge about bees?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: Primarily because the community knows where the different stingless bees nest. A community member guided us through the forest, identified a tree, and we found the honeycomb intact there, in its natural state. They can identify every tree; they’re masters at it. And I am too. For example, they found the congona tree and, touching it, said, “This is marometiqui,” as it’s known in Asháninka.
And what we did was compile all the information in Asháninka, and when we got to the laboratory, my colleagues and I discussed and identified the scientific names of each tree species the stingless bees nest in. After that, we put it together with information I had gathered in the field, such as tree measurements, the height at which the bees nest, and the type of bee.
We also discovered that the bees nest not only in the trees, but also in the ground. For example, we found Tetragonisca angustula in the subsoil. When we dug, there was a beehive, and inside it, the honeycomb and the queen. The women [beekeepers] already knew this, but to study it, we had to conduct a survey. That’s the result of teamwork.
Mongabay: After working with stingless bees, do you think research and meliponiculture can become tools for conservation against threats such as drug trafficking and deforestation?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: I think that meliponiculture can bring about positive change for people and community development without negatively impacting the protected natural area or cutting down a single tree. One of the benefits of our bees’ honey is that it’s of a very high quality, so it fetches a higher price. This is what we’re working on with the communities.
Beekeeping can replace destructive activities, like illicit crops and logging, which sometimes bring settlers or non-Indigenous people to the area.
Mongabay: What impact do you think this study could have on Asháninka communities and on academia?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: For us, the most important thing is to recover our ancestral culture, to find out the history of each community. The most important thing is to hold on to this knowledge, so that it may become one of the fundamental pillars of science. When I began working in Marontoari, the elders told me that ancestral wisdom was fast disappearing.
And I think it’s important for the Western world to understand that if we share our knowledge with you, you should also share your knowledge with us. For example, in this case, we teach communities how to make technically standardized boxes to improve their meliponiculture, because traditionally they kept bees in a kind of gourd called a choncorina.
I think we can achieve more if we work with both kinds of knowledge, Western and Indigenous. These two pillars lead us to conclude that Asháninka knowledge is just as important as modern science.
I feel proud to be the first Asháninka to publish a scientific paper. And I don’t think I’ll be the only one. I think that in two or three years, others will join me, others who also believe that science is important in everyday life.
Mongabay: In your opinion, what is needed for more Indigenous youth to be able to pursue scientific research?
Richar Antonio Demetrio: First, we need to educate them both at home and at school. We need to tell them our stories and train them so that we may recover our cultural identity. Second, we must speak with bilingual teachers’ associations and ask why they teach math, language and literature, but don’t talk about the importance of science. We must tell them we can train them in scientific methodology and talk to them about our work and how we’re promoting research. This is essential.
There’s been a generational shift in which I see more of an interest in science, and I think that five, six, seven years from now, there will be many more Asháninka interested in learning about science.
Banner image: Richar Antonio Demetrio is the first Asháninka scientist to publish two papers in international scientific journals. Image courtesy of Richar Antonio Demetrio.
This story was first published here in Spanish on Aug. 30, 2025.
Citations:
Demetrio, R. A., Cárdenas León, D., Delgado, C., Correa, R., & Espinoza, R. V. (2025). Traditional ecological knowledge on stingless bees in two Ashaninka communities in the central rainforest of Peru. Ethnobiology and Conservation, 14. doi:10.15451/ec2025-03-14.10-1-12
Demetrio, R., Muñoz-Schrader, O., Faria, J., Baselly-Villanueva, J. R., Cardenas, D., Isuiza, M., … Espinoza, R. V. (2025). Spatial distribution, tree host associations, and deforestation threats on two stingless bee species in the Peruvian Amazon. Journal of Ecology and Environment, 49. doi:10.5141/jee.25.021
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